Lets tweet

What are we turning into? A community that communicates in 140 characters or less? I miss writing long letters, elaborately giving details of my recent vacation to my friends. Today it would be. “Meenakshi Iyer returned with sun burns and an amazing tan, she loves Goa.”

Twitter is turning us into people with shorter attention spans, with abysmal retention power. It’s like a disease I say if am allowed to be a little crude here. We no longer prefer reading texts that flows into more than three paragraphs.

It is certainly revolutionizing communication but in which direction is the question? We roll our eyes if we find people who are not on Twitter, celebrities are fast signing up as well. Now, I completely support the new media and its wonders, but at the same time, I also take a step backward and contemplate. Where is this leading me?

Social networking puts you in a spot where telling the world what you up to is more like an urge. People are living two lives- online and offline.

Online they have the control, they can mould their persona the way they would like to see them online, it’s like living a virtual dream. So you join groups, become fans of things you don’t even have a clue about? Why? Because the rest of the world is doing so. It is herd behaviour. You want to impress a girl, just manipulate your interests/hobbies sections of your profiles. But what are you in real life may be totally diametrically opposite of what you pretend to be. You go out with your gang of boys, have a great night at the friendly bar, you come home and the first thing on your mind is to put pictures on facebook. You want the world to know that you have an awesome life (considering the popular definition of awesome= social)

Social media definitely revs up your cool Q but at the same time it is turning you into someone you are not.